Time Zones

I came across this passage in morning reading about Centering Prayer which is an ancient Christian Prayer form that comes from Catholic tradition. I just love it when teachings from the religion of my birth and teachings of yoga and meditation intersect in sheer oneness and beauty.

The Greek Fathers distinguished between chronosandchairos. Chronos is chronological time: the steady flow of minutes, hours, days, and years. It moves along relentlessly, with steady, unflagging pace –no matter what is going on. It is totally equalitarian, flat, unvarying. Chairos is the time of grace, the fullness of the present moment, the all that is now. Each moment has its own uniqueness, its own fullness, its own quality. [Through methods of meditation and Centering Prayer we will more quickly) graduate into a life of chairos, a life that is filled with luminous Presence, great peace, a constancy in joy…–M Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O